Sigh. How quickly the days go by when all that is required are sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, and maybe an occasional ice cold mojito and a quick glance at the awful weather in Minnesota. Did we live there once? Nah, it must have been a really scary nightmare.

I think it is Day 24. Southern Exposure. Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, FL. This is the "rocket garden" that greets the visitors as they enter the Kennedy Space Center grounds. The rockets trace the history of our space efforts since the 1960's. We took a bus ride out to the gantry area where space shuttles were launched and to the Apollo/Saturn V center that contained a Saturn V moon rocket. We were in the actual control room for the Apollo 8 launch and experienced the launch from the control room. We went back to the space center and experienced a shuttle launch in a simulator without throwing up, and then we watched a 3-D IMax movie about the Hubble Telescope. All in all a fascinating day; actually we thought it was one of the better tours that we have taken on our trip so far.

On Tuesday we moved from the Orlando area to our present RV campground in Titusville. The trip was only 56 miles and left us plenty of day to see more sights. The suggested schedule was to visit the Astronaut Hall of Fame, but we chose to go to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and do bird watching. And, we were rewarded by seeing a male and 3 female painted buntings, and a bunch of roseate spoonbills. The temperature got to 97 degrees and was a little too warm for even snowbirds that escaped from far north. Oh, the picture above has nothing to do with the NWR. It is a bottlebrush tree in a botanical garden in Orlando which we visited on Monday. The botanical garden got 2 thumbs up and was well worth the day trip to see. We ended Monday attending a dinner theater at Capone's. It was an all you can eat Italian meal served by characters out of the Capone era followed by a musical comedy set, again, in the Capone era. We also learned that "Iowa" stands for "idiots out walking around." Sorry, Lillian...

We had 3 days in the Orlando area. We chose to go to Epcot. Fortunately, our son Rhys and family have been there on numerous occasions, and he had suggestions of things to see and hints as to how we could experience more of Epcot without standing in long lines. We did it up royally, avoided lines, decided we need to move to Canada after seeing their presentation, and lucked out on our timing since there was a huge flower and garden show on the grounds of Epcot.

OK. We did a lot more things that are too numerous to write about, and I'm starting to bore myself. So, be assurred, Fl and the weather and the sights and the experiences are living up to expectations. Now, we have to go to another social gathering of our group. They are a very social bunch, and we can hardly have a day when we don't gather in the campground formally or informally and chew the fat. Which, by the way, on a trip like this, there is a lot of additional fat to chew.